Standing with the Asian American Community Against Racism, Hate and Fear

Debra Gore-Mann•April 16, 2020•General, Diversity & Inclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare that we are all interconnected and that our success relies heavily on seeing one another’s humanity. By acting in love for one another we can shed our scarcity mentality and collectively protect the most vulnerable in our community. Unfortunately, the rhetoric from people at the highest levels of our government seeks to fuel division by going back to their playbook of hatred and fear.

As a bi-racial American of Asian and Black descent, I refuse to allow my fellow Asian Americans be a convenient scapegoat for this kind of division at a time when our collective cooperation is most needed. It is indecent and unjust for AAPIs, who represent a wide, diverse, diaspora of people, to have to wither under a storm of physical assaults, hostile stares, xenophobia, shunning and dismissive slurs.

To be clear, the coronavirus has no connection to race or ethnicity. The virus does not discriminate; people do.

For too long, the narrative of “yellow peril” and fear-based policies against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders has been used to justify racist policies from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Japanese internment to the Muslim travel ban. Or, when it’s convenient, the AAPI community has been elevated as the “model minority” to incorrectly disparage Black and Latino communities and support racist policies to justify inequity. Now, Asian American communities are being used once again to create an enemy for the current health and economic crisis that plagues us today, leading to growing cases of anti-Asian hate documented every day. All are a grim reminder of the legacy of White supremacy that’s built into American life, that exists to tell me and my family that we do not belong and we should not work together.

But, I refuse to accept this. And I refuse to let this current President write that history for me.

Instead, I choose to look towards the Chinatowns, Little Tokyos, and Little Manilas where AAPIs across the country are actively fueling our economy, providing for one another, and contributing to the cultural fabric of our communities. I find inspiration from the Chinese-American community in Seattle that is actively drawing from its connections to help support a health care system that was so ill-prepared for this moment. I support the quick mobilization by Chinese for Affirmative Action, Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (known as A3PCON), and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department to Stop AAPI Hate. I appreciate the acts of solidarity from leaders like Governor Newsom and Speaker Pelosi that continue to stand up against acts of hate. And most importantly, I draw inspiration from the social movements that came before that show me that when we stand together across communities, we can prevail.

But we must remain vigilant against the insidious nature of fear. This fear that tries to distract us from the incompetence of our federal government and the failure of decades of policies that led to inequities that are only now being further magnified by this pandemic. This fear that tells us to hold on more tightly to what’s ours because we only exist in a zero sum game. This fear that tells us to stay silent.

Let us move well beyond our fear and our silence. Let’s build a fierceness in energizing all our communities to draw close to our AAPI friends, colleagues and family members and tell others to stop the hate and xenophobia. Let us stand together and reject discrimination and racism against all communities of color that pervade our institutions and that result in African Americans getting infected at alarmingly high rates.

“We must remain vigilant against the insidious nature of fear... Let’s build a future that allows all communities to collectively thrive.”

Debra Gore-Mann, CEO

Let’s reject the policies being written today to cut off farmworker communities from safety net services, to reject Individual Taxpayer Identification Number holders from receiving federal aid, and place limits on all of our communities to successfully participate in our democracy. Let’s build a future that allows all communities to collectively thrive.

Racialized structures work because they rely on our buying into the belief that individuals must make it on their own and we are “less than” if we believe otherwise. I believe that we can create solutions that lift up the very best of all our communities.

I am reminded of Martin Luther King’s saying: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Those four words, “silence of our friends,” hurt us much more deeply than the rambling or senseless acts of our enemies. We can pull our guard up against our enemies. We are in some ways prepared when we are disrespected by those who are ignorant and want to create fear. We can rationalize the behavior of our enemies because we know they seek to hurt us. I can be strong in the midst of blatant hatred.

However, the silence of my friends? The silence is what we remember and what eventually breaks our hearts.

The silence must stop and Greenlining will no longer let racism and xenophobia go unchecked. Together we can work together to rewrite this chapter in history such that no one is left behind again.

Removing Barriers, Creating Economic Opportunity

About The Greenlining Institute

Founded in 1993, The Greenlining Institute envisions a nation where communities of color thrive and race is never a barrier to economic opportunity. We advance economic opportunity for people of color through advocacy, community and coalition building, research, and leadership development. We work on a variety of major policy issues because economic opportunity doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Rather than seeing these issues as being in separate silos, Greenlining views them as interconnected threads in a web of opportunity. The Greenlining Institute is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit registered in the US under EIN: 94-3173571.